Word: kyoto
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...talks on the Kyoto Protocol in the Netherlands in November, the negotiations in the end were unsuccessful because the EU and the U.S. could not agree to limits on greenhouse gasses. Do you think that this sort of disagreement will become more or less common in light of the documented possibilities of climate change...
McCarthy: I personally am optimistic about future resolution of the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. I can roll the clock back a year and a half, when there was discussion of putting off the sixth conference of the parties that was held in The Hague for two reasons. One was [that] our reports were not going to be out. And the second was the U.S. election. However, when people thought about it, they said, 'We'll know pretty well what's in your report even though it won't be finalized and after all the U.S. election will have occurred...
McCarthy: That's one of the really tricky things and that's what the Senate weighed in on a couple years ago, in 1997, opposing any agreements at Kyoto that did not include developing nations. It is a fact that if you look at all these scenarios of future climate change, the increased rate of population growth is much greater in the developing than in the developed nations. The desire to increase standard of living in the developing nations is something we have to respect. So if you let those scenarios unfold, you move a few decades into this century...
Most Presidents (and most people), however, subjugate the environment to the economy. That the United States did not meet its obligations set out in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, for example, did not seem to concern President Clinton too much. George Bush and his administration differ here more by scale than by type. Yet his newly appointed Cabinet poses another, more pernicious threat to the proud--and bipartisan--tradition of American environmentalism. For George II seems to be the champion of environmental elitism, where the natural heritage of this country only falls to those able to afford...
...legacy. He could appoint agency chiefs who would hold up environment-protection plans, and omit funds in his budgets for projects drawn up by Clinton, leaving them to die on the vine. Unsympathetic officials could slow down the cleanup of PCBs from the Hudson and the implementation of the Kyoto climate-change treaty by sheer foot dragging...